Who Are The Plainclothesmen Attacking Protesters In Iran?
Many Iranians taking part in nationwide protests in the past month have complained that they have been beaten, shot at, or arrested by thuggish plainclothesmen.
Many Iranians taking part in nationwide protests in the past month have complained that they have been beaten, shot at, or arrested by thuggish plainclothesmen.
Others have complained about unknown non-uniformed agents in the streets carrying shotguns who sometimes even boss around uniformed officers.
During the past decades, Iranian activists have called them Hezbollahis, thugs, or simply Lebas-shakhsi [plainclothesmen]. Whatever their name, it is obvious that despite their appearance, they are well-organized, are linked to uniformed security forces or sometimes their members who have put on ordinary outfits in the interest of anonymity.
Most are members of the Basij paramilitary forces under the command of the Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC.
Whoever they are, the Iranian government assumes no responsibility for their crimes, claiming they are protesters engaging in provocations.
Sometimes when they cannot deny the facts, Officials claim that these elements are not armed and do not attack anyone unless they come under attack by protesters. However, people have often photographed or filmed them carrying weapons and attacking and arresting individuals in the streets.
Plainclothes agents assaulting a woman trying to make an arrest
Iranian lawmaker Hossein Noushabadi told reporters on October 17, that "Plainclothes officers have nothing to do with women or protesters in general unless they come under attack." However, he did not say why these officers do not wear uniforms so that everyone recognizes them as official agents. Noushabadi, however, did not rule out the presence of "rouge elements" among the plainclothes officers and acknowledged that some of the protesters have been killed or wounded by these rouge elements.
During the protest that followed the disputed presidential election in 2009, IRGC General Hossein Hamadani organized thousands of prisoners and street thugs to attack protesters and suppress a movement that demanded a fair counting of votes.
"We identified around 5,000 thugs who were present in the riots but were not linked to political parties. We usually controlled them by not allowing them to come out of their homes in sensitive junctures. I recruited them and organized them in three battalions. I knew that we need to train and use individuals who were familiar with knives and daggers and swords," Hamadani told reporters.
Plainclothesmen attacking protesters in Mashhad, second largest city in Iran
During the recent round of protest that started in mid-September social media reports and victim’s families revealed how the plainclothes elements operate. BBC Persian interviewed a Kurdish woman who said that thugs stormed her son's house and arrested him. She said that the incident led to her daughter-in-law's miscarriage.
According to a report posted on the Twitter account of Iran Human Rights (IHR NGO) aTehran University Student in late September revealed that plainclothes officers had wounded him because of assault and battery.
In fact, some of the officers involved in the death of Mahsa Amini were plainclothes elements. Her death after being arrested by the ‘morality police’ triggered the current protests.
In another development, Iranian journalist Milad Pour Isa tweeted on Tuesday that plainclothes officers arrested around 20 Mazandaran University students.
According to Rouydad24 news website in Tehran, when people produce evidence that they were beaten or arrested by plainclothes individuals or even when videos of plainclothes officers arresting, beating or shooting at protesters emerge, the government always claims that they were "rogue elements."
As long as all law enforcement officers in Iran do not wear uniforms, the government can always get away with criminal acts committed by them. Since 1999, when plainclothes officers violently suppressed a student uprising in Tehran killing several students, some regime insiders have been trying to convince the security forces to issue uniforms to all law enforcers, to no avail. Security forces are under the command of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei who needs the plainclothes agents to save the regime from the people.
While the protests have gone far beyond the issue of hijab and turned into full-fledged antigovernment demonstrations and clashes with security forces, some lawmakers defiantly insist on hard-line approaches to hijab and call for heavy-handed crackdown on protests while others seem to be seeking ways to pacify the situation by trying to convince others to accept peaceful demonstrations.
Ultraconservative cleric Mojtaba Zolnouri a member of the Iranian parliament from Qom told Asr Iran website that "women who do not cover their hair should be sentenced to 74 lashes." He claimed that "A notice served by the morality police will not be enough for women who take off their hijab."
Zolnouri, who is a member of parliament's National Security Committee, criticized other lawmakers for questioning the morality police and said that Iranians should not question the rationale behind its mission. He charged that lawmakers who criticize the morality police are disturbing the public's peace of mind.
According to Asr Iran, the morality police has filed complaints at the Judiciary to take critics at the parliament to court over their condemnation of its performance.
In another development, hardliner lawmaker Mousa Ghazanfarabadi told ISNA that that women who violate compulsory hijab rules should be identified using face recognition technology and subsequently deprived of social rights. Ghazanfarabadi further tried to justify use of force in "dealing with women who violate compulsory hijab rules outrageously."
Meanwhile, as most of the complaints about violent behavior of security personnel have been about plainclothes agents, lawmaker Hossein Nushabadi said in an interview with Rouydad24 website that "Plainclothes officers have nothing to do with women or protesters in general unless they come under attack." However, he did not say why these officers do not wear uniforms so that everyone knows who they are.
Although Noushabadi claimed that plainclothes officers do not attack people, he did not rule out the presence of "rouge elements" among them and acknowledged that some of the protesters have been killed or wounded by these rouge elements. However, he refused to say how can people differentiate between plainclothes officers and rouge elements. Armed plainclothes officers are seen in many videos of the protests on social media.
In his defense of the protesters, however, Noushabadi called on the government to determine certain places where people can go for peaceful protests without fearing repression by security forces or plainclothes officers. Calls like this have been made time and again during the past 30 years, but no practical measure has been taken by the government.
In another development, lawmaker Mohammad Hassan Asafari told ILNA in an interview on Monday that "No permission from the government is needed for holding protest gatherings. He said that the Majles has tabled a motion to make the officials accountable for the security forces' mistreatment of the protests.
The right to protest is recognized in Article 27 of the Iranian Constitution but various Iranian governments in the past four decades have refused to uphold this right and respect the Constitutional Law. The only conditions set in the law for taking part in protest movements are that demonstrators should not be armed, and the protest should not be against the essence of Islam.
According to Asafari, it is difficult to convince the government about the people's right to protest unless powerful political parties are formed in Iran.